When the censors stand in the way

A short while ago, my colleague Ellis Pratt wrote about censorship and asked what it might mean for technical writers. I can’t stop thinking about what he said — surprisingly, since it’s something I rarely thought about in more than 30 years as a technical communicator.

Ellis reported on the British Library’s effort to censor content — and its unintended consequence: A patron couldn’t read Hamlet because it contains violence.